


Dispatches from the PDA of Fushimi Saruhiko

by red_river



Series: Second Chances [3]
Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Gen, General, Humor, M/M, Minor Kuroh/Shiro and Reishi/Mikoto, Mostly Shiro Making Fushimi's Life a Living Hell, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 17:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8169688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_river/pseuds/red_river
Summary: "How much respect do I owe an ex-King who rules a twelve-by-twenty dorm room and has three subjects, if you count the kitchen robot?” Fushimi muttered, overjoyed as usual with his choice of career.
In the wake of Return of Kings, Weismann comes to Scepter 4 and wears out Fushimi's patience in record time.  General, humor; a side story to "Thirteen Weeks", from Fushimi's POV.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story is meant to go hand in hand with "Thirteen Weeks" - basically, a glimpse into Scepter 4 after Reishi's disappearance, and the Silver King getting on Fushimi's nerves. I had a lot of fun with this perspective, exploring characters like Awashima whom I feel got a raw deal in the anime, as well as dropping little hints about where Reishi is while tying up the loose ends of the clans. I hope you enjoy.

**Dispatches from the PDA of Fushimi Saruhiko**

 

Hating his job was nothing really novel for Fushimi.  In the three years he’d been working for Scepter 4, the infiltration into Jungle probably came closest to an assignment he didn’t hate, and then only because the endless drudgery of playing lackey to another narcissistic pseudo-monarch had the possibility of coming to a swift, violent end if he tipped his hand.  Death wasn’t his first choice, necessarily, but some days it seemed better than the alternative.

With the destruction of the Dresden Slates and the end of the Kingship system, Fushimi had allowed himself to imagine that the idiotic assignments the Blue clan took up like a holy crusade would come to an end.  But not only had that turned out to be pathetically optimistic, apparently even the permanent grounding of all the Damocles Swords hadn’t knocked the former Kings from their pedestals.

“What do you mean, the Silver King is here?” Fushimi asked, leaning one hand on his direct superior’s desk and not trying too hard to look bored instead of annoyed.  Though he was bored, too.  “I thought he croaked after the Slates went down.”

Awashima didn’t look up from the pile of reports on her desk, but she gave a very cutting swipe of her stylus that was probably meant as a rebuke.  “I’m not assigning you to escort a corpse, if that’s what you’re asking.  And for future reference, the Records Division has settled on the term ‘spontaneous body reassignment.’ I don’t want to see ‘croaked’ in any of your reports.”

Fushimi turned away with a click of his tongue, flicking his glasses back up his nose.  Scepter 4’s second-in-command had always hated him, ever since he’d made an offhand remark about rising through the ranks so fast she’d be out of a job before her next paycheck cleared.  Or maybe it was what she described in his personnel review as his “unflagging unprofessionalism, derision, and disrespect for authority.” Either way, making conversation was almost too troublesome to be worth it.

“Fine,” Fushimi allowed.  “I might have heard he’d…reanimated.  That still doesn’t explain what he’s doing _here_ ,” he said, jerking his head to indicate the XO’s office, the bustle of the surrounding hallways, and the rest of Scepter 4 by proxy.

Awashima sighed.  “Please don’t pretend to be ignorant, Fushimi—it’s not as cute as you think.” Then she cleared her throat, glancing up from a stack of paperwork that was appropriately high for the sadistic pleasure she took in doling it out.  “The Silver clan has never formally held a territory.  In the absence of such, Captain Akiyama has agreed to give Emeritus Monarch Shiro Weismann unfettered access to Scepter 4’s resources and personnel while he works to settle the remaining issues related to the Dresden Slates.”

Fushimi knew only too well what _issues_ those were.  Whether it was tracking down the last remaining Dresden artifacts or rounding up the handful of U-ranked Jungle members who’d been making trouble downtown—with spray paint and crowbars, in the absence of their borrowed powers—it felt like there wasn’t a Slate-related problem Akiyama hadn’t pointed him at since the other man became the head of Scepter 4 very suddenly two weeks earlier.  If the Silver King wanted to take all that on, Fushimi was happy to salute them all—with one finger, Homura style—from the front gate and go back to keeping busy mainly by hating his life.  But his ears had caught on one word in Awashima’s otherwise mind-numbing explanation.

“Personnel?” he repeated, his lip already curling.

A tiny smile tugged at the corner of Awashima’s mouth.  “I have offered Weismann your complete and _enthusiastic_ cooperation for as long as he needs you.”

“Why me?” Fushimi demanded, and then wondered why he’d bothered.  Like he’d ever come out clean when the shit jobs started flying.

Awashima gave him a flat look.  “Because I’m busy, and the captain is busy, and we both outrank you.  Besides—you’re the only person on staff who’s worked for three different clans.  A fourth shouldn’t be that much of a stretch for you.” Then she straightened in her chair, suddenly serious. “He’s a King, Fushimi.  Show him the respect he’s owed, or I’ll take it out of your hide.”

“How much respect do I _owe_ an ex-King who rules a twelve-by-twenty dorm room and has three subjects, if you count the kitchen robot?” Fushimi muttered under his breath.  Then he gave a mocking bow and retreated to the hallway, overjoyed as usual with his choice of career.

 

* * *

 

 

Fushimi leaned back against the wall of the briefing room, arms crossed stiffly over his uniform as he rolled his eyes at the ceiling.  It was a subtle movement, one he’d gotten away with in briefings a hundred times, but somehow Weismann caught him at it, and he shot Fushimi an aggravating little smile without missing a beat in his discussion with the top members of the soon-to-be-dissolved Gold clan.  Fushimi looked away, clicking his tongue automatically against his teeth and then annoyed that he’d let his annoyance show.

The list of people who got under Fushimi’s skin always started with Yata, the moronic skateboarding vanguard of the pumped-up street gang at which he’d thrown a few years of his life.  Number two was his own King, naturally, but the Silver King was quickly climbing to number three, and might surpass Munakata if he hung out at Scepter 4 for another week simply because the Blue King hadn’t been around to nag him lately.  Munakata was a fussy, condescending prick, but at least he’d treated his job like a job; Fushimi wasn’t sure how much more he could take of watching the ex-Silver King play pattycake with the Golden Rabbits, far too cheerful for someone on whose shoulders supposedly rested the fate of the post-Kingship world.  He didn’t seem to be losing much sleep over it.

Fushimi had found the man annoying enough when he was a reedy whip of a high school student with a smug, uncanny expression, but it was even worse now that he was back in his original body, taller than Fushimi by a few maddening inches and older than him by eight decades and change, his face eternally fixed in that all-knowing smile.  Fushimi hadn’t fazed him yet, not even with a few choice remarks about the black dog that trailed at his heel, looking more ridiculous than ever now that he was two sizes too small.  At least Yatogami Kuroh wasn’t invited to the meetings, meetings, and more meetings that made up the Silver King’s post-apocalyptic reconstruction strategy.  Fushimi only had to deal with that mangy stray at lunch.

Speaking of…wasn’t it about time for Weismann to dismiss this litter of rabbits and then mosey down to the cafeteria to see what his secondhand lackey had cooked up after commandeering the Scepter 4 kitchen?  Fushimi moved his gaze to his watch and then back to his present lord and master, who didn’t seem to have noticed the time, lounging with one arm draped over the borrowed navy-blue coat slung across his seat back.  One of six identical overcoats Munakata had left hanging in his office closet, apparently not worth dragging wherever he’d gone.

No one in Scepter 4 really had any idea what had happened to the Blue King.  In the weeks after his Kingship came to an abrupt and almost fatal end, Munakata had been normal—well, normal for him, which was tight-lipped and morose, barely opening his mouth unless it was to chew someone out.  Then all of a sudden he took a leave of absence, named Akiyama his successor, and vanished like smoke, destination unknown.  The GPS on his cell phone had been disabled, there had been no activity on his credit card—Fushimi was keeping an eye on it—no movement at all in his accounts except a sizeable withdrawal on the day of and one final purchase, a ticket on a train heading north.  The last image of him, at least on security cameras Scepter 4 had access to, was a shot of his back as he stood on the train platform staring out at the sea, a small bag clenched in his fisted hand.

Fushimi resisted the urge to click his tongue again.  He had been tempted to quit Scepter 4 altogether after the destruction of the Slates, but since he’d won some brownie points with Yata for his supposed loyalty to the vindictive bastard who used to be his sovereign, it felt like he’d had no choice but to stick it out.  And now Munakata had run off, on top of everything else.

On a whim, two weeks after the Silver King staked his claim on Scepter 4’s second-best meeting room, Fushimi had sent a text to Munakata’s phone: _The Silver King’s been sniffing around, if you care._   He hadn’t expected anything to come of it—taunting the Blue King was habit as much as anything—and was shocked to find his phone buzzing fifteen minutes later with a dispatch out of the void; after countless texts and snubbed calls, finally a response from the prodigal King.  But all it said was _Give him whatever he wants_ —uncharacteristically generous for the hypercritical bastard who’d taken perverse pleasure in dressing Fushimi down any time he put so much as a toenail out of line.

Bored out of his better judgment by a never-ending meeting about the Gold King’s real estate holdings, Fushimi hadn’t been able to resist texting back: _Is that an order, ex-Captain?_

There was a pause before his phone buzzed with the reply.

_I know where the bodies are buried, Fushimi.  Please don’t forget that._

Passive-aggressive as usual, Fushimi thought, straightening as the current meeting finally started to dissolve into Gold clan glad-handing and Weismann waving from the wrist like a celebrity.  How was he supposed to know that Munakata monitored what his soldiers were monitoring on the security feeds, much less that he’d detected the semi-illegal off-label camera Fushimi had carefully positioned to peer through Bar Homura’s window?  Really he’d been doing everyone a favor, keeping a close eye on those hooligans.  But since that was just one of many bodies Munakata could unbury if he chose, Fushimi played the good soldier and kept his mouth shut—for the most part, anyway.  Still, it was hard to shake the aggravation of being under somebody’s thumb even when that thumb was MIA.

Of course, now there was a brand-new thumb bearing down on him.

“Ah, Fushimi,” Weismann began, stopping next to him with an armful of PDAs and that same self-satisfied grin on his face.  “I need to pick up a few things…I appreciate the loan of your King’s closet, but his taste is a little drab for me.  What do you say we sneak out and go shopping for the rest of the afternoon, just you and me and Kuroh?”

Gun to his head, Fushimi couldn’t imagine anyone he’d want to spend an afternoon with _less_ than these two VIP clowns.  But he had a feeling that didn’t count as _enthusiastic cooperation_ , and Awashima already had enough excuses to chew him out.  He settled for a derisive eyeroll, annoyed all over again that he had to look _up_ at the Silver King instead of peering down his nose at him like he’d done the first time they met.

“Don’t you have a meeting with the Strain Reintegration taskforce in two hours?” he asked.  But Weismann just laughed, giving his shoulder a passing bump that threatened to topple the whole pile of PDAs.

“We’ll reschedule,” he promised, as if Fushimi actually cared how he handled this shit.  “Come on,” he teased.  “I’ll treat you to something.  I bet Reishi never bought you anything.”

Fushimi could just imagine what that ex-pain in his ass would say if it ever came out that the Silver King had taken him shopping.  And when had Munakata and Weismann gotten on such familiar terms, anyway?  No doubt it all led back to whatever the Blue King was doing, holed up somewhere while the Silver King tidied up all his loose ends.

“I don’t need to be bribed to do my job.  I’m not a child,” Fushimi snapped, losing his temper because that insinuation was insulting and definitely not because he was irritated to be out of the loop.

“Of course you’re not,” Weismann assured him—but even as he said it, his features settled into that haughty smile, as if he couldn’t help reminding everyone that he was seventy years older—and, supposedly, wiser—than the rest of them.  Then, with a careless shrug: “Though Reishi did warn me you can be a little touchy when you haven’t eaten.  Come on—let’s talk about it over lunch.”

God—he couldn’t decide which King was most insufferable.

 

* * *

 

 

It turned out the only thing more unbearable than dancing attendance on the Silver King at work was putting up with him when he _wasn’t_ at work.

In a just world, Fushimi shouldn’t have been forced to walk over that bed of coals.  He had no idea what Awashima was like outside of duty hours, and if he’d ever been unfortunate enough to walk into a restaurant and spot Munakata trawling at the bar, he’d have put heel to rubber so fast he’d probably knock the door off its hinges.  But it was like no matter where he went in this town, he just couldn’t lose Weismann or his flunkies.

Like Tuesday, for instance.

Fushimi wasn’t one of those people who had to get laid once a week to keep his marbles in his head; in general he preferred a different kind of power trip, one executed with a surveillance camera and a passcode breaker, or a saber when he was really feeling vicious.  He wasn’t even sure yet that he was trying to get laid by this woman with short copper hair and a sailor’s mouth, who was tucked up next to him in some overpriced club in an anonymous ass-crack of the entertainment district.  But he did know he didn’t want to be interrupted by a silver-haired busybody trying to bring back the baroque belts and ruffles, attended by a young man all in black who looked more like a nephew than a date these days.

He was one sip into his second drink when the woman leaned in and shouted, “Hey, do you know that guy?” jerking one hand toward the figures at the bar.

Fushimi peered over her shoulder and forced down a sneer.  “No.”

The woman gave him a cock-eyed stare that reminded him a little too much of grunge and axel grease, no one in particular.  “You sure?” she asked.  “’Cause the guy in the duke shirt is really trying to get your attention.”

Weismann’s flirty finger-wiggle looked even more idiotic in this body, Fushimi reflected—idiotic enough that he had to get over there and stop it before anyone else realized that gesture was aimed at him.  He’d cut off a few digits if he had to.

“What are you doing here?” Fushimi asked.  He didn’t demand— _demanding_ wouldn’t have counted as enthusiastic cooperation.  _Demanding_ would have earned him a long leather boot up his ass—unwise, when Yata had warned him he already had a pole wedged up there pretty tight.

Even surrounded by gyraters and more than a few drunks sloshing their sours, Weismann was inanely cheerful.  He also seemed to have no idea that Fushimi hated him, which only made the hate that much more intense.

“We followed you in,” the Silver King announced, as if it were natural to stalk your coworkers after your shift instead of carving out a few hours alone before you were thrust back into that purgatory.  Weismann raised his sparkling fuchsia drink as if toasting the whole establishment. “Kuroh and I were out looking for an adventure—Miyabi told us all about going to a _rave_ with her friends from school.  Is this the sort of place we could find one?”

Miyabi must be the cat’s name, Fushimi decided, now that it wasn’t a cat.  He stared incredulously around at a bar probably not wild enough to get the wave going and then back at his Tuesday night buzzkills.  “Not really your crowd, Your Highness,” he said, which was what he’d called Munakata whenever he really wanted to get under his skin.  Weismann didn’t even seem to notice, though—or at least, not the way Fushimi wanted him to.

“You don’t have to be so formal, Fushimi,” he insisted.  “Call me Shiro.  It’s Shiro and Kuroh,” he added, hooking an elbow around the shorter man’s neck and pressing their cheeks together.  Kuroh pulled back with a sour expression, the straight man in their bad comedy routine.  Fushimi resisted the urge to spit his last swig of vodka all over those ridiculous heeled boots.

If Weismann and Munakata were on a first-name basis, then Fushimi would use their last names until the maggots mapped his bone marrow.

And it wasn’t just his nightlife Weismann had put a stake through.  Four weeks after the arrival of the Silver clan, Awashima still had him chained to the ex-King like a misbehaving dog.  Whenever their business took them out into the city, everything took twice as long as it should have because Weismann had no speed above a mosey and was fascinated by things that wouldn’t hold the attention of a child.  He loved mag-line trolleys.  He loved junky souvenir shops and phone charms with tanukis in paper hats—his spirit animal, Fushimi theorized, that damn cryptic bastard.  He especially loved the ice cream sample robot posted down by the train station to advertise for the artisan shop three blocks away, and it was his obsession to try every new flavor, though he forced Fushimi to reach into the clanging metal mouth that guarded the flavor samples, convinced the automated program had it out for him.

“They always read me wrong,” Weismann remarked as he tried to free his long, prissy sleeve from the jaws of a postage slot, the automated machine hopping after them for thirty yards and cursing their lowborn parentage.

Worst of all, Weismann seemed to have decrypted him in some deep, unpleasant way that only Munakata had ever accomplished.  It was as if those seventy years in the sky had turned the Silver King into a human Geiger counter, tuned to anything that wasn’t his business.  Not only was he up on all the Scepter 4 gossip, including a few scandals that hadn’t yet made the rounds, but impossibly, Fushimi had barely spent a month being Weismann’s indentured tour guide before the other man interrupted a forced march home from Mihashira Tower with the absurd suggestion: “Let’s swing by the Red Clan’s bar.  Homura, wasn’t it?”

Fushimi almost choked on the plastic spoon that had come in his pistachio ice cream sample.  “What?  Why would we bother with that downtown flop?” he asked—too sharply, if the Silver King’s obnoxiously raised eyebrows were anything to go by.

Weismann shrugged.  “No reason.  It’s a place to get a drink…besides, I haven’t had a chance to pop in since this whole negotiation got started.  Kusanagi owns the deed to the bar, after all, and Anna was more than happy to leave all the patrolling to Scepter 4 from now on, so there wasn’t much to discuss.  It’d be nice to see them again.” Then he got that look on his face, the smug look Fushimi recognized by now as Weismann about to pluck out someone’s weakness like a stray thread and wave it around, delighted with his uncanny ability to dissect people.  “You have a friend there, don’t you, Fushimi?” he asked calmly, as if he couldn’t feel Fushimi’s shoulders stiffening at the implication.

Fushimi snorted.  “Hn.  Hardly.”

There were a lot of ways to describe the relationship between him and that skateboarding mutt who’d been Suoh Mikoto’s number-one lapdog.  He wouldn’t have put friendship on the list.  But somehow Weismann was still smiling, snagging him by one elbow and dragging him onto the chariot to hell—more literally, the mag-train to Homura’s part of town.

“Oh, okay.  I understand,” Weismann promised, patting Fushimi’s shoulder in a way that made him want to saw it off.  “Well, don’t worry—if anyone asks, we’ll say I twisted your arm.”

“You are twisting my arm,” Fushimi snapped, alarmed to see the street signs shooting by like emergency exits.

Weismann laughed.  “That’s the spirit.”

Three hours later, pissed, frustrated, and missing a shoelace that Weismann had needed for some archaic German drinking game, he stopped by Scepter 4 to give his report. Awashima listened silently to his account and then looked at him for a long time without comment, her pinched expression even more skeptical than usual as she tapped her stylus on the desk.

“You’re telling me you spent three hours drinking in Bar Homura—on company time, I might add, since you failed to use the Digital Clock-Out function on your phone—and somehow managed to neither destroy public property nor get into an altercation with Yata Misaki?”

“Just wasn’t feeling it,” Fushimi drawled, though the reality was more like he hadn’t been given an opportunity, what with the Silver King stealing center stage and getting all the Reds riled up in a different way.  He gave Awashima a bored smirk.  “If you’re disappointed, Vice Captain, I could always go back and try again.”

Awashima didn’t take the bait.  She studied him another moment before laying down her pen.  “Is there any particular reason you’re being so cooperative about this, Fushimi?”

“You ordered me to cooperate,” Fushimi replied.

Awashima nodded.  “A fact that has had no impact whatsoever on your behavior to this point.  Something’s keeping you in check this time.  Anything you want to share?”

The texts from the Blue King were on his mind—missives from a vanished sovereign, too busy to show but never too busy to radio orders back to his army of tin soldiers.  Awashima was right—he should have been raising hell with the Silver King precisely because he’d been warned not to.  But Munakata’s disappearance had left him a little unsettled, itchy in his skin.  And anyway, there was something about Weismann that just made him hard to rattle; he always seemed to be one step ahead, and Fushimi got the feeling that the more he fought the more he revealed, weakening his position every time he opened his mouth.  It had been the same with Munakata—the same even with Suoh, all those years ago.  Maybe it was like that with every King.  Fushimi turned away from his superior, clicking his tongue.

“Am I obligated to answer that question?” he asked, just as surly and stubborn as he had been the last time he asked.

Awashima sighed.  “Fine.  I have no time to deal with you.  Get out, please.” Then, as he turned to the door: “Oh—and I’ve decided to extend your assignment to Emeritus Weismann.  He seems to be a good influence on you.”

Fushimi wished both the Blue and the Silver Kings death by painful disembowelment.

 

* * *

 

 

It wasn’t until the fifth week that Fushimi began to suspect what Weismann was really up to, hanging around Scepter 4 all this time.  Weismann was a master manipulator and Fushimi wasn’t good with people, which was the excuse he gave himself for taking so long to see the agenda behind the agenda, the shadowplay of that slippery silver-haired eel.

Slates or no Slates, Kings or no Kings, there hadn’t been that much work to do and Weismann had done most of it by the end of the fourth week.  Fushimi wasted a few days wondering if the Silver clan was such a mess he really had nothing better to do than malingering along in meetings that were getting more and more like playdates, with longer tea breaks and less wearisome paperwork, while the Silver King chatted and laughed with the head of the Gold Rabbits in a way that couldn’t accomplish anything except pumping up his social calendar.

And it wasn’t just the leader of the Gold clan.  Weismann took lunch every day in the packed cafeteria—more packed, after news got around that the black dog was a decent cook and the Silver King was big on sharing—and Fushimi would be damned if there was one fawning, boy-band-pretty Scepter 4 saberman that the enigmatic ex-monarch hadn’t chatted up during those midday gab sessions.  He took his breaks in the corpsmen’s lounge or in the nerd squad server room, perching on a table in a way that made his long white admiral’s coat look even more ridiculous and delighting in every new whiff of gossip—especially anything about himself.  But Fushimi didn’t really put it all together until he saw Weismann and the new captain of Scepter 4 going over the patrol schedule, their heads bent over a digital map of the city until Akiyama excused himself and Weismann leaned back in his seat to watch him go, serene and satisfied.

He was their surrogate, Fushimi realized, lounging against a pillar in the cafeteria and watching him play his games.  He was taking Munakata’s place, at least in spirit—easing their transition into a post-King organization in the way Munakata hadn’t bothered before he hit the bricks.  There was no denying how much more relaxed Akiyama was, having a King around again—and as much as it pained Fushimi to compliment another human being, the young soldier was starting to come into his own, reassured by the presence of someone to hold his hand, to make him feel like he was a real captain and not just the bucket into which Munakata had dumped his sloppy seconds.

It was true for the other Blues too—and for the Reds, who had been Kingless for a long time, struggling to hold themselves together around that little porcelain doll they loved for the man who’d loved her, who was powerful but not charismatic at all, not like Suoh Mikoto had been.  Dragged from one tedious meeting to the next, Fushimi could see the tension easing between the clans, like a muscle slowly relaxing after a fight.  The Green Clan dissolved, then the Gold, and before he knew it Blue was just an institution, Red just a family, the long war between them simply and suddenly over.  And to top it off, that damned Silver King had somehow convinced Yata Misaki they were friends again, which was a real drag—Yata would take a lot more shit from his friends, it turned out, which made him harder to rile up.

Seamlessly, without anyone else noticing, Shiro Weismann had made himself completely irreplaceable and utterly obsolete, filling the hole Munakata had torn in his organization without trying to replace him.  Fushimi might have been impressed if he wasn’t so busy being pissed that Weismann had singled him out as someone who needed extra coddling, and also, in some deep, unexpected way, a little put out to watch some other King stepping into Munakata’s role.

It wasn’t a preference thing—he despised them both equally.  It was just that after three years of bowing and scraping at Munakata’s coattails, it would have been nice to find himself working for the top dog in Shizume City, instead of this second-string kumbaya floozy who was more interested in making friends than throwing his weight around.

He couldn’t resist texting _You’re missing all the action_ out into the void, but of course he got no reply.

Only Awashima seemed as nonplussed as he was about the regime change.  It irked him to be in agreement with her on anything, especially when she’d been so quick to pawn him off on the Silver King.  Yata had tried to convince him (Yata was an idiot—Fushimi had no idea why he’d confided in that chimpanzee) that it was a gesture of trust, asking Fushimi to keep an eye on Scepter 4’s VIP when she couldn’t be around.  But whatever else he thought of her, he knew Awashima wasn’t stupid enough to entrust anything important to the dog that bit its master nine out of ten times.  And she didn’t seem particularly wary when she caught the Silver King in the hallway, offering him a cup of tea while she sent Fushimi down to the on-duty room, ferrying messages like her damn secretary.  No—what she seemed was preoccupied.

Fushimi had a feeling he knew what was on her mind.  He was proven right ten minutes later, when he returned from gofer duty and found them in the middle of a conversation.

Usually Fushimi was shameless about eavesdropping.  But this time he had a legitimate reason to be standing just on the other side of the cracked office door, catching a glimpse of Awashima and Weismann seated across a short table set for tea in the second before he lifted his hand to knock—and then stopped, intrigued by Awashima’s voice as she hesitated over her teacup.

“Do you know where he is?”

Weismann lowered his cup, too, watching her across the black polished rim.  Fushimi leaned back into the niche just outside the door, arms crossed.  There was no doubting who she was talking about—all of Scepter 4 was silent around them, the corridors deserted as if just the intimation of that former busybody King was a pall over the whole building.  Fushimi wouldn’t be surprised if even the cafeteria had gone quiet, forks and spoons suspended in the sudden hush.

The Silver King resettled his teacup on the inlaid wooden table without the softest rattle.  Then he looked up at Awashima and smiled, his hands folded carefully in his lap.  “Yes,” he said.  “There’s a beautiful little harbor town up the coast from here—very quiet, serene.  Never can keep the name in my head.  There are so many towns like that, you know, along the train line.”

Awashima’s face was blank, but Fushimi doubted Weismann had missed the way her hand tightened around the body of the teacup, just hard enough to lace white through her knuckles.  “Why?” she asked, her voice tense in the silent office.  “What is he doing that’s so important?  Is it something to do with the Slates, with the Swords…?”

Weismann laughed, a gentle sound like the movement of his hand as he waved the question away.  “No, no.  Nothing like that.  He’s simply looking after an old friend.”

Fushimi watched Awashima’s eyes narrow, no doubt wrestling with the same confusion he was.  As far as he knew, Munakata had only had one friend.  A long moment passed before Awashima sighed, and when she spoke again her voice was quiet, resigned—the voice of someone who had tried to be a friend and confidante to the Blue King and been refused time after time.

“Is he…all right?  Is he happy?”

There was a funny little smile on the Silver King’s face.  “He may be much better very soon,” he replied—an answer like a cipher, useless without the code.  Typical of that cryptic bastard.

Awashima nodded once, and then again, the choppy motions of someone who didn’t understand but was trying to.  Then she took a deep breath, spinning her teacup with one distracted forefinger.

“Those last few weeks, after we lost the Slates to Jungle…he was barely holding it together.  I was afraid his Sword might come down at any moment.  You could see that in him, couldn’t you?”

Weismann tipped his head in acknowledgment.  Awashima sighed again.

“After Suoh Mikoto…after everything that happened, he was even more closed off than before.  He wouldn’t lean on me—on any of us.  That pride would have killed him, if you hadn’t saved us first.” She shook her head, and from Fushimi’s vantage point in the doorway she looked almost disgustingly human, relieved and resigned all at once.  “It’s good to hear he’s with a friend.  If you talk to him, tell him he’s welcome to come back to visit—but not to stay.  I don’t think this is the right place for him anymore.”

Weismann was still smiling, that smug smile that had to be carved into his face—but the expression seemed softer than usual, the Silver King’s eyes almost blindingly bright as they locked with Awashima’s.  “He’d be proud of you.  Of all of you,” he murmured as an afterthought, glancing out the window toward the storm coalescing far away, in the northern sky.  When he turned back, his expression was flawless again.  “And in the meantime, you have your hands full, don’t you?” he teased.

Awashima rubbed a hand across her forehead.  “Yes, I do,” she agreed.  Then, with a sharp tone that startled their spy into jarring his elbow on the hinge: “Fushimi.  Don’t be childish.  If you’re going to come in, just do it.”

Fushimi clicked his tongue and did as he was told.  Apparently it wasn’t just the Kings who were addicted to their little power trips.

 

* * *

 

 

Fushimi thought he was probably the only one not surprised when Weismann suddenly announced, just a week later, that he and Kuroh were leaving Shizume City, giving up his position teaching German at the university after one short quarter.  Fushimi wasn’t particularly broken up about it, though that attitude won him a black eye from Yata, their first genuine spat since the reuniting of the clans.

Fighting with Yata was its own reward.  But beyond that, Fushimi wasn’t surprised because he thought he understood what Weismann understood, what went right over Yata’s admittedly short head: that in a post-Kingship world, there was no place for Kings—overbearing relics of the way things used to be, a civic order centered around blind loyalty and raw, unbridled power.  You couldn’t have independence and figureheads in the same place.  Inevitably, one by one, the Kings had to disappear.  Shiro Weismann was just the last to go.

And yet somehow, against his will, Fushimi found himself loitering in the doorway of the Silver King’s temporary quarters on the morning of his departure, watching his taskmaster pack a rat’s nest of clothing and souvenirs into moving boxes.  He had only come to rub it in—his liberation from the former monarch’s leash—but he hadn’t found the right moment yet when Weismann turned with a giant novelty fan in one hand and a red paper umbrella in the other and spotted him in the doorway, his face immediately creasing with that familiar, charmed smile.

“Ah, Fushimi!  I was hoping you’d come to see me off.”

Fushimi clicked his tongue at that idiotic notion but then grudgingly stepped inside, hands stuffed down in his pockets.  “Where will you go?” he asked—not because he cared, but because it was something he should know, to rub it in Yata’s face later.  Or maybe he just wanted to know what tourist spots to avoid; nothing would wreck a paid vacation like crossing paths with those jesters.  Weismann just laughed like it was all a wonderful game, stuffing an armful of long overcoats into a battered black suitcase.

“Ah…I think we’ll go north.  The Lieutenant had a few properties in this little seaside town—including a beautiful house at the top of the hill, with an ocean view.” He paused there for a moment, as if waiting for something—and then Fushimi realized what the Silver King was telling him, what he’d been telling him all along in bits and pieces.  The Gold King’s real estate holdings, a coastal town, a train heading north…it had been right in front of him the whole time, if he’d bothered to put the clues together.  Fushimi snorted, shaking his head as he watched Weismann stoop to tuck the tail of a navy-blue coat into the overflowing suitcase.

“Funny,” he muttered.  “I thought you said that wasn’t your color.”

Weismann had that obnoxious smile on his face again.  “Mm.  Well, who knows.  It can get cold along the water.  Maybe I’ll find someone who wants to borrow it.”

It was really revolting, how long it had taken Fushimi to figure it out.  At least he’d managed before anyone else.  “A harbor town up north, huh?” he said under his breath.  But that was all he said—Awashima had said the rest of it already, and if he wasn’t running Scepter 4 anymore, Munakata was off his list of problems.

Nonetheless, Fushimi couldn’t quite stop himself from pausing in the doorway to glance back one more time, his hands braced against the polished wood of the frame as he watched Weismann bundle eight hangers and their frilly shirts into a dry cleaning bag.

“If you see Munakata…” he started.  The thought broke as the Silver King’s eyes found his.  Fushimi tossed his hair out of his face.  “Tell him he’s an ass,” he finished, absently annoyed at the cheerful little wave Weismann shot him as he turned away.  Then he pulled the door shut behind him and slipped down the hallway, leaving the Kings and all that troublesome shit decidedly at his back.

In his pocket, his cell phone buzzed—Yata, texting to find out when he’d be off.  _Want to try out that new skate park in the city center??_ , followed by too many question marks and an emoji that was either sticking out its tongue or vomiting, Fushimi could go either way.  He smirked.

_Looking to get your ass handed to you like last week?_

Yata’s response was a lot of spluttering and autocorrected profanity and excuses about last week only happening because his skateboard got away from him and snapped in half under a mag-line train—which was true, but still pathetic.  The glare of sunlight through a window turned the screen momentarily blank, and Fushimi stopped for a second beside the glass, peering through his reflection at the skyline of Shizume City.  Clear skies—good weather for traveling, maybe, if that kind of thing mattered anymore.

Three stories down, he could see two small figures, one with dark hair and one with light, hurrying along the path that led to the Scepter 4 gates, boxes and suitcases bumping behind them.  Knowing Weismann’s pace, they were absolutely going to miss their train.  The thought almost made him smile.

“Fushimi!”

Fushimi turned back to the corridor to find Awashima waiting for him, hands on her hips.

“You’re assigned to lead a patrol through the former Jungle district in less than five minutes.  At exactly what point were you planning to equip and join the deployment van?” she barked.

Fushimi turned away from the window with a click of his tongue.  Back to business as usual: hating his job and everyone involved with it.

Maybe Awashima would be his new number two.

 


End file.
